Gold
by IWantYouShesSoHeavy
Summary: It seemed to Thomas that despite his numerous attempts to be one of Ratcliffe's men, he would forever remain the young, slack-jawed ginger who, in his continuous bewilderment of all that around him, had successfully walked off a ship and been saved by John Smith.
1. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

It seemed to Thomas that despite his numerous attempts to be one of Ratcliffe's men, he would forever remain the young, slack-jawed ginger who, in his continuous bewilderment of all that around him, had successfully walked off a ship and been saved by John Smith. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to recall the foaming, stormy waters or the sails whipping violently above their heads in a turbulent rage. The image of John, dragging a coughing, spluttering man—no, a boy, barely eighteen—on deck was forever implanted in their minds. Though Thomas was a friendly enough young lad, he struggled to lift a sack of sawdust, while the others, black hair covering every inch of their tanned and brawny forearms, stacked three on their shoulders. If they were pack horses, he was a drowned mouse. Or perhaps if they were all farm animals, he was at least a chicken.

It was these gloomy thoughts that were occupying Thomas's mind as he sat around the campfire with the other men that night. For the most part, they were kind to him—when they weren't making offhand comments about his paleness or his freckles or his slender fingers, that is. Woman hands, Ben called them.

"Oi, Thomas," Percy drawled, clapping a burly arm around the smaller man's shoulders. "Ye don't have to shoot the boar, just eat it." He poked at Thomas's uneaten dinner, charred, rivulets of juicy fat coursing through it. Lon really was a terrible cook. He'd only been designated as so because he was the shoddiest hunter of all the men, Thomas excluded.

"You got a problem with my cooking, Tom?" Lon asked, wiping his greasy fingers on a soiled apron which Thomas supposed was once white.

Ben chortled, black teeth and all, and said, "It's not your cooking that's the problem, ye brute! The boy just needs a fine woman in that apron serving it to him."

The men all laughed. Thomas managed a grin and rueful shrug, biting into the pork. It was mostly gristle, and an unpleasant thickness coated his tongue as he smiled. He imagined it leaking through his teeth and dribbling down his hairless chin.

Later that night, as Thomas lay in his dismal cot, he thought of his mother. She was beautiful—is beautiful, he scolded himself—with fair, luminous skin and hair like cast bronze. His father was an imposing sort of man if you avoided looking at his face, which had an ever-present genial aura about it. He had darker auburn hair, a shade that Thomas envied. Alden, only nine and now without an older brother to look after him, was the epitome of an English cherub, with full cheeks and glistening golden hair.

 _Gold_. Gold was the reason that they were forever digging holes, akin to stabbing a pincushion a million times with a single needle.

Sleep soon overtook him then, and Thomas dreamt of warm brown eyes that matched his own.

* * *

An ear-splitting shriek rattled the tent.

Thomas leapt out of his slumber instantly, heart battering his chest, and reflexively seized the musket which lay underneath his cot, fumbling and dropping it. He cursed and grappled with the weapon as if attempting to clasp a wriggling carp.

I'm the carp here, he thought.

Trembling, visions of savages and gore overwhelming him, Thomas secured his grip on his weapon. He rose a quivering, pale hand and brushed the tent flap open—

Howls of glee greeted him.

A burning sensation accosted his face, and he tossed the musket back into the tent. Savages? He had been foolish.

"Very funny," smirked Thomas. "Which one of you ladies decided to squawk into my tent this fine morning? I must admit, it did give me a little start."

Percy chuckled, wiping away the tears which trailed down his flat, pug-like face. "Don't play hard, boy. Ye bounced outta bed like an Injun in a bathtub. What were ye gonna do with that gun anyway? Try to shoot it, and ye'd end up missin' yer bollocks!"

The other men chortled. Thomas sported a rueful grin, his neck glowing, and ducked back into the tent.

After a meager breakfast consisting of dusty cracker-bread and leathery beef, Thomas emerged once again. It was another day that greeted him, no different from the last: in a cycle of dull monotony, he would dig with all of the other men, who on the whole treated the endless, banal task with the dreary attitude it demanded. Underneath this front of tedium, however, seemed in each of the men a slight glimmer of hope—anticipation at the prospect of gold. Regardless of how fruitless the day would eventually close, the possibility never seemed entirely futile. Was it delusion? To even entertain the thought was, in Thomas's opinion, unseemly; it had to be true, and any other circumstance was blasphemous to their presence here, in a land so far removed from home.

Glory would prevail, thought Thomas, as the sun beat down on his back, its fingers worming their way into his clothing and imposing on his white skin patches of lurid red. His shirt was soon drenched, and perspiration plastered it to his frame unpleasantly. Sometimes, when he rose his head to wipe the sweat off his brow, he swore that he could see the heat's rays bending, as if the sky was curving towards the earth in an unwelcome greeting.

Thomas paused briefly for lunch, consumed a small portion of leathery cracker-bread and dusty beef, and resumed digging.

It was mundane work, and during it his thoughts often drifted. Today, for whatever reason, he found himself recalling Evelyn, the daughter of the local baker back home. A sweet-faced young lass, she had the tendency to blush prettily, especially when Thomas greeted her on the occasions he'd visit the bakery. Their fathers were close, and it was often that they spoke, although in Thomas's mind their interactions could hardly be called conversation. He'd bring up school, the weather, even, at one point, the process of rising yeast. All of his attempts were met with measuredly pleasant answers and furtive upward glances at him.

Women were often strange around Thomas as a general rule, and he couldn't for the life of him see why. He wasn't obtuse. He knew how women admired men, and how men admired women. He had seen, throughout the years, how girls coyly watched his schoolmates, the men on the dock, even on occasion—rather disturbingly—his own father.

But he wasn't well-muscled; he wasn't manly. He was rather tall, he supposed, and his mother had often commented on the thickness of his reddish hair—hair that had been a source of humor for fellow schoolchildren when he had been younger. He definitely wasn't repulsive, he acceded, but he wasn't like Aldrich, with his mossy green eyes, curly midnight hair, and strong brows. Aldrich had said that Thomas had a way of speaking with women. Thomas could never really see it. He spoke to them like he spoke to anyone else, he thought: friendly, with a careless smile, and he'd told his friend so. Aldrich had grinned, a single dimple in his right cheek, and said, "Maybe they think you're pretty."

At the time, Thomas had scowled and shoved him, his face hot. Now, he thought of the hardness of the dark-haired boy's shoulder under his fingertips.

Thomas gripped the shovel, knuckles white, and thought of nothing but rosy cheeks and the scent of freshly-baked bread until dinner.

* * *

The campsite was considerably tenser than usual the next day when Governor Ratcliffe decided he'd had enough of John's absence over the past few weeks.

"Where does that infernal man go off to, day and night? Never seen a shovel in his life, that one!" thundered Ratcliffe to no one in particular, his heavy brows crushing beady, black eyes underneath. "Ha! Captain John Smith, my bollocks."

Thomas exchanged a look with Lon, who rolled his eyes to the cloudless sky and fired off five rounds in rapid succession. He only missed the target once.

"He has a point," said the dark-haired man to Thomas's right. Darcy was his name, remembered Thomas. "We're here doing all this digging while the captain is off getting his jollies swimming and plucking daisies." He was loading his musket with a practiced ease, his dexterous hands moving quickly. Thomas watched enviously.

"Shut it, ye knob," grumbled Lon, an empty carton in his teeth, eyes drilling holes in the target at front.

"Perhaps he's off scouting or something, finding new campsites and the like," said Thomas.

Darcy scoffed, carelessly fired off several rounds, and admired their perfect landing. "You're just soft on him because you'd be drowned otherwise," he said. Then he chuckled darkly and muttered something to himself that Thomas's didn't catch, although it sounded nasty, and departed either in search of ammunition or better company.

"YOU, BOY!" Ratcliffe shouted.

Thomas leapt up, startled. It was the first time that the governor had addressed him directly in the weeks since the camp had arrived.

"What're you glaring at? Either practice shooting up those damned reds or go dig some holes. I don't need any more wastes of space in this confounded camp!"

"Yes, sir!" replied Thomas at once. He loaded his musket clumsily, dropping a bullet in his haste. Hoping that he had escaped Ratcliffe's attention, he glanced up warily. The man glared back at him.

"Don't just stand there dawdling, boy! Get to it— _quickly_ now!"

"Er, yes, sir," said Thomas, wincing, and fired off a shot. Although he had braced himself for the recoil he knew would come, his hands still jumped of their own accord at it. The bullet was launched into a nearby tree.

He stumbled backward and eyed Ratcliffe warily. The incensed man strode towards him alarmingly quickly for his bulk, the plume of his hat bobbing frenetically. Thomas lurched to his feet, stumbling again in his haste. Ratcliffe panted, his plump face mirroring his magenta coat, as he seized Thomas by the collar of his sweat-drenched shirt.

"BLASTED CRETIN!" he roared. "HAD SMITH LET YOU DROWN IN THAT OCEAN, YOU WOULD HAVE SAVED US ALL THE TROUBLE!"

Breathing deeply, he released Thomas and glowered down at him. "Make yourself useful, Timothy boy, and either grab a shovel or go find out what your beloved captain is up to. AND PRACTICE YOUR SHOOTING, FOR THE LOVE OF ENGLAND!"

With that, Ratcliffe stormed away, red cape rippling behind him. Thomas stared after him incredulously, fear rapidly giving way to vexation.

"Ye alright, mate?" asked Lon.

"Yes," Thomas said testily, and he went off in search of his compass and, apparently, his beloved Captain John Smith.

For what seemed like an hour but in reality was closer to twenty minutes, Thomas clambered through trees and bushes, fighting them all along the way. Twigs relentlessly snagged his trousers, and he crouched to disentangle them, muttering irritably to himself. Angry thistles soon joined in pointy harmony, with a couple successfully lodging their horridly spiny bodies into his skin.

"Bloody hell," Thomas cursed under his breath as he examined his wounds.

"What was that?" a familiar voice emerged suddenly from his right.

Startled, Thomas glanced up sharply and spotted the very man he had been searching for in the nearest clearing, a mere nine or ten meters away. Or perhaps it was another man that resembled John Smith identically, because John was doing something so peculiar that it couldn't have been him. He appeared to be caressing a strange woman—an Indian woman.

Cautiously, Thomas slowly flattened himself to the forest floor, biting his tongue as thistles pierced his palms, until he felt he was entirely hidden by a cover of foliage and brambles.

John had his hands on the Indian woman's face, looking away as if searching for the source of the disturbance. Thankfully, he was focused in the direction opposite the intruder. John turned back to the woman and spoke gently, his words too soft for Thomas's ears, and brought her face to his in a tender kiss.

Thomas's mind whirled. Captain John with an Indian? The sight was so extraordinary, the idea so outlandish, that he doubted reality for a moment. But he couldn't have dreamt with such clarity of a native woman he'd never seen, or of the present pain stinging his limbs.

Both parts aghast and intrigued, he stared at the woman engulfed in John's embrace. She was tall and lithe, nearly statuesque, with black hair that cascaded freely down her back, and was so immodestly clothed, her sharply cut dress exposing brown thighs, that Thomas would have flushed red in any other situation. But now he gaped, wonderingly, at the bizarre dark marking on her arm and at her chestnut skin as it stood out starkly—no, radiantly—against John's pale limbs. She drew back then, and Thomas caught sight of her face: it was regal, with high cheekbones, full lips, and proud eyes. She was beautiful.

She was savage.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Slowly, Thomas inched away. Once he felt he was a safe distance from the clearing, he stumbled through the thicket, mind reeling. The stinging pain in his arms and legs couldn't be farther away.

It seemed he had found out where John Smith always went off to.

He knew the man was more free-spirited than most; he was kinder, that was certain, and an adventurer at heart. But _this_ Thomas would have never suspected. The idea of an Englishman with an Indian certainly wasn't one he'd ever entertained before, but that embrace—tanned skin enfolded by white—was now seared into his mind.

 _Ratcliffe_ , he remembered suddenly. The governor had sent him to retrieve John Smith, but the idea of telling him what Thomas had unearthed seemed to amount to no less than a betrayal. The captain had saved his life, after all, and although he resented the incessant teasing he endured because of it, he had no desire to see the man dishonored. He was a good man, a respectable one.

But respectable men didn't embrace savages. They didn't _kiss_ them.

As Thomas approached the campsite, he attempted to quieten his inner tumult. He still had no inkling of what to do about the scene he'd just witnessed, but of one thing he was certain: Ratcliffe couldn't know. Despite Thomas's own misgivings about what he'd uncovered, he wouldn't have the results of the fallout on his head. Ratcliffe was angry and desperate, and angry and desperate men did irrational things when provoked.

Yes, Thomas would stay out of it all. Was it really his business if John had a penchant, as peculiar as it was, for female natives?

Thomas had no trouble finding Ratcliffe; he heard him before he saw him.

"—BLOODY CUMBERGROUNDS, ALL OF YOU! IF I HAVE TO TELL YOU TO GET TO WORK AGAIN, I'LL DECORATE MY TENT WITH YOUR HEADS!"

Wincing, Thomas thought of slipping away, but Ratcliffe's beady black eyes found him immediately like a bullet hitting its mark.

"YOU, BOY! WHY ISN'T THAT INFERNAL—oh Captain, there you are, my dear fellow! Would you mind having a word with me in my tent?"

Thomas spun around—John was emerging from the woods behind him.

Cold shock froze Thomas— _had he been seen?_ But John merely gave him a careless grin and ducked into the tent. Ratcliffe followed, his puce-colored face betraying his resentment at having to show propriety in the captain's presence. Conversation could be heard within: Ratcliffe's tense words, his sycophantic posturing, and John's easy laughs.

Briefly, Thomas wondered what fictions John was inventing to explain his absence. Then, remembering he'd decided to wash his hands of the matter entirely, he went off to join the other men.

But when night fell, Thomas found the image of that illicit embrace branded onto the inside of his eyelids. His preoccupation was only natural, he told himself. After all, women back home didn't dress so brazenly, and he was a healthy young man who had never so much as kissed a lady in his life. A man couldn't help fantasizing about Indian women, as blatantly carnal as they were, even if he were the most distinguished gentleman in England. John Smith's lapse, if untoward, was understandable.

However, there was another thought creeping in the back of Thomas's mind, try as he did to deny it: it hadn't been a woman he'd imagined embracing.

* * *

Thomas woke the next morning to an unusually quiet camp. He peeked out of his tent curiously, and where there should have been men already at work there was only silence.

Lon emerged from his tent, yawning widely and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Oi, Lon!" Thomas whispered loudly. "Is everything alright?"

Lon strolled over, grinning widely. "Everything's peachy, Tom!" he said heartily. "The governor's fallen sick! Must've shouted himself hoarse with all that yelling he did yesterday, poor brute."

Perhaps it was the freedom from Ratcliffe's domineering presence, or maybe there was a need for all that shouting after all, but either way, Thomas soon found that the men did little work when unsupervised. John Smith was present for once, but he chatted idly among the men, and when he ambled away, they would sit back on their shovels and tilt their faces to the sun, basking in the heat that had been so oppressive just a day before. Thomas saw flashes of silver exchanged between hands and held up to mouths, and the men grew louder and lazier as the day went on. As there wasn't much for Thomas to entertain himself with (he could only tolerate conversation with men in that state for so long), boredom soon overtook him.

It was for that reason, he told himself, that he did what he did. Under the cover of a particularly bawdy tale Percy was telling, Thomas saw John creep away furtively into the woods. With a brief moment of hesitation, he followed.

It had been an incredibly half-witted idea, as Thomas soon found himself quite lost. He didn't know what had possessed him to pursue John in the first place like a sort of covert spy—or a _voyeur_ , for Christ's sake. After all, the whole matter was really none of _his_ affair, and Thomas vowed that once he found his way back to the camp, he'd leave John to carry on with that Indian as much as he fancied in peace.

Only once his trousers had been torn sufficiently in various places and he had plucked his arms raw of twigs and thistles, Thomas found the clearing which led to the campsite. With a sigh of relief, he made to enter it—and paused.

Something wasn't right. Thomas wasn't much use without his compass (foolishly, he'd neglected to bring it), but something told him he was farther east than he should be. And that sound—a loud rushing, like the noise the trees made during a rainstorm—definitely wasn't familiar.

A waterfall, thought Thomas. But the campsite was nowhere near a waterfall.

Clutching his musket to his frame, he cautiously poked his head around a thick cluster of trees.

It was a small clearing enclosed on all sides by woods, containing about a dozen Indian males bathing in a rushing stream against the backdrop of a small waterfall. A sudden warmth assaulted Thomas's cheeks: they were all entirely nude. The natives appeared to be talking and laughing, voices drowned by the rushing of the water. Each of their bodies was decorated with strange markings like those on the female Indian, but more intricately, and in some cases, Thomas could see more drawing than skin.

Suddenly, they stilled; another Indian had appeared in the clearing. He was clothed only by a sort of animal hide tied around his waist, and had two marks on his chest that looked like—Thomas squinted, as he really was quite far away—red handprints. His jaw was strong and square, but his coal-black hair was long and silky like the female savage. Then he moved, and Thomas noticed—his face burning—that there was really nothing feminine about him at all.

Reaching down to disrobe, the Indian approached the stream, and the other natives moved away as if in the presence of a prince. The action shattered Thomas's reverie— _he was near an Indian camp._

He had been standing there gawking like an absolute _imbecile_ —fear seized him as he realized the precariousness of his position. If any of the natives caught sight of him—Thomas eyed their formidable physiques, their bows and spears clustered on the riverbank—he would be _killed._ He had a gun, yes, but he was a horrendous shot—not to mention terrifyingly outnumbered.

Heart thudding his chest painfully, Thomas turned and ran.

He ran and ran, for how long he didn't know. Only when a stitch began to slice his side did he slow to a walk, panting heavily.

What had he been _thinking?_ Those were clearly Indian warriors, the most violent of savages, and undoubtedly would have had no qualms about piercing him with their arrows, or _scalping_ him—nausea overwhelmed Thomas as he envisioned his scalp sliced off by a grinning savage, the largest one of the group, his tongue lolling and black eyes gleaming with a carnal glee…

Feeling thoroughly sick, Thomas stumbled through the woods for what seemed like an hour before he finally found the right clearing. Relief settled over him, a warm blanket. At least here, with the scores of Englishmen and their guns, he was safe from savage attacks.

Evening had cooled the camp by the time Thomas arrived. He found a number of the men sprawled around a large campfire, singing and making merry, passing around flasks and bottles in drunken camaraderie. His eyes found John Smith, who was sitting alone and nursing a bottle of whiskey with a small smile on his face.

"There you are, Tom!" shouted Lon, his tomato-red face shining with inebriated glee. "Come over, why don't you—budge up, Darcy, let the man have a seat—have a beer, Tom, there's a good lad—"

Thomas allowed himself to be swept up in the festivities, his mind growing fuzzier with each drink that was pushed into his hand. He wished to forget what he'd just experienced, and his arrant stupidity for allowing it to happen...

...Yet try as he did to erase the image from his mind, the Indian with long, black hair and strong jaw remained. His upper body had been completely nude, and Thomas felt a strange heat travel from his toes to his face when he thought of that smooth, chestnut skin. It was the alcohol, he told himself. That was the reason for the odd flipping sensation in his stomach, the hitch in his chest…Thomas felt like his entire body was blushing, all the way to the roots of his red hair...

"You've had quite enough, haven't you?" a voice said. Thomas looked up and, through his haze of drunkenness, saw John take a seat next to him. The man pried the drink from Thomas's hand, grinning. A sudden anger seized Thomas at his presence.

"'S all your fault," he mumbled.

It had been _his_ fault for all this, _his_ fault that he'd gotten lost and almost killed...and that he couldn't stop thinking about that Indian man in a way that was most definitely improper…

"How's that?" asked John with faint amusement, like a parent indulging a child.

"You know what I mean," said Thomas, glaring unfocusedly. "You and that—that native woman—"

Thomas regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth. Even through his drunken stupor, he could see the way John tensed, the way his eyes widened. John glanced around quickly, and Thomas felt his forearm grabbed firmly, almost painfully, as he was dragged away.

"Unhand me!" he slurred. "I'll fight you, you—"

" _Quiet_ ," hissed John. Never in his life had Thomas seen the captain so serious. "How did you—" Something dawned on his face, and he snorted, shaking his head. "I _knew_ it, I _knew_ I'd heard someone there—Pocahontas said it was just Meekoo, but _I_ knew—that bandit doesn't lurk in bushes anymore—"

"Pocahontas?" said Thomas stupidly.

At the name, John's expression cleared, and he smiled softly. "Her name is Pocahontas," he said, and there was a hushed reverence in the way he said next, "She's a princess."

 _A princess?_ Thomas wondered, foggily, if it made that Indian male he saw a prince. The other natives certainly acted like he was. So they had a system of royalty, the natives, like back in England...

John seemed to mistake Thomas's silence for anger. "Tom," he said, a note of urgency in his voice. "You won't tell the other men, will you? They won't understand, you see. They'll think she's a savage, as with all the natives—"

"Aren't they?" blurted Thomas. He expected John to become riled at his outburst, but John merely gave him a look akin to pity.

"No," he said gently. "It's what I thought at first as well, but she knows things, Tom. Things we don't. _They_ know things."

Thomas couldn't see what savages might know that Englishmen didn't, but he stayed quiet. He'd assumed John's affair with the Indian was a mere fancy, but this was something else, and he felt rather out of his depth.

His inner tumult must have shown on his face because John rested a large, reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, "Come with me."

"Er—"

"Come meet Pocahontas, Tom. You'll see it is as I say."

It was a ridiculous idea. Again the Indian man surfaced in Thomas mind, and he realized hazily the need to stay as far from the situation as possible—he felt, though he couldn't explain it, something lurking in the recesses of his being, clawing to escape—and if he permitted it to drink—

"Alright," said Thomas.

* * *

Yes, Thomas decided the next morning. It _had_ been a ridiculous idea. But the captain was dogged as all hell, and he didn't take no for an answer.

So there Thomas was, accompanying John Smith through the thicket to meet his lady native. At least this time he was walking alongside him instead of lurking behind like some unwanted hound. John, apparently thinking the same as Thomas, shot him a shrewd look.

"Here we are," said John at last. He looked at Thomas expectantly.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Well, you'll have to hide, won't you? Can't very well frighten her off."

Grumbling, Thomas crouched low behind the same cluster of brambles as the day before. His ears reddened as he heard John laugh.

"Very well," said John. "I'll let her know I've brought someone for her to meet, and then I'll give you the signal to come out. And for the love of Christ, Tom, leave that gun behind. She despises them."

"Right," said Thomas, wincing. The wounds on his palms had only a day's healing before they were torn open and smarting once more.

John went over to stand in the middle of the clearing. Thomas waited, and for the next ten minutes, there was no sign of her. _Pocahontas_. A rather unusual name, he thought.

Then, at last, he saw her: the same lithe, brown woman glided into the clearing and into John's arms. John brushed the hair away from her neck and whispered something into her ear. Immediately, her head whipped around—she jumped like a spooked horse and leapt away—John grabbed her waist and pulled her to him—and then Thomas saw, in the trees across from him, a pair of dark, watching eyes.

The Indian man—strong-jawed and silky-haired—drew back his bow.

Blood pulsed in Thomas's ears. Without thinking, he loaded his musket, aimed, and shot.


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

There was a loud _thump_ —a woman was screaming—large hands were on Thomas's shoulders, shaking him violently. The musket fell from his limp grasp.

As if suspended in the threshold of sleep, Thomas breathed, "John, are you alright?"

John's pallid face stared back at him. "Tom," he said. "What have you _done_?"

And the weight lifted off of Thomas's shoulders as John sprinted away.

Thomas lurched to his feet. He felt as if he had been hit with a stone to the back of his head, and a dull dread was clawing into his stomach. He stumbled after John, but no sooner did he reach halfway across the clearing did a violent brown and black mass charge him, screaming in a tongue he didn't understand. Tears streaked her face.

As Thomas looked at Pocahontas, he was at a loss of what to say.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

She glared back at him with such fierceness in her black eyes that Thomas thought for a moment she might hit him, but fortunately, John emerged a moment later.

"We'll have to bring him back to the camp, just for tonight," he said, addressing Pocahontas. Her eyes widened, and she darted behind the trees to where the dead Indian lay.

 _Just for tonight?_ And what did he plan to do with Thomas afterwards?

"For tonight?" croaked Thomas.

John looked at him grimly and said, "Yes. Of course, he'll have to stay in your tent. Ratcliffe wouldn't ever stoop to enter it, though he feels free to enter mine any time he pleases."

Dimly, Thomas realized John hadn't been referring to him.

"The Indian—he's alive?" he asked haltingly.

He felt a strange relief wash over him, mingled with fear.

"No one faults you, Tom. After all, he _was_ of the mind to shoot me with that bow," said John in a manner which Thomas supposed was meant to be reassuring. But he felt far from reassured; indeed, the ground suddenly felt very far away.

John sighed, oblivious to Thomas's inner tumult. "Poor fellow must've thought I was molesting Pocahontas," he said regretfully. "I grabbed her while she was trying to get away—shouldn't have done that, I suppose. We'll have to get him back to the camp, and soon; the charlatans' medicine won't do much for him. Come, help me carry him. It's early enough still that the men will be asleep."

And he hurried behind the trees once again. Thomas stared after him incredulously, the abrupt turn of events leaving him at quite a loss, and followed.

He found John crouched low over a large, unconscious body clothed scarcely in hide. A pool of blood bloomed from the Indian's right arm. Thomas avoided looking at the man's face. His heart seemed to have a mind of its own: it was hammering wildly.

John shrugged off his vest and tied it tightly around the Indian's arm in an effort to quench the flow of blood. Thomas felt ill at the way the red blossomed at once through sky blue, hungry.

"Forgive me, John, but I must ask— _have you gone mad_?" he whispered violently.

"The natives' medicines will do no good for him, I've told you," replied John. "Do you suppose we leave him here, where any wild animal could find him? If we work quickly, we may be able to salvage his arm—it's God's grace that you remain a horrendous shot. Now, grasp his legs firmly—I've got his head and shoulders—he must have been knocked out when he fell…"

But Thomas, helping to heave the body into the air, ceased listening. Against his own wishes, he'd caught sight of the Indian's face. Even with closed eyes, it was impossibly handsome: smooth, brown, and angular.

Suddenly, he felt eyes on him. He looked up and, flushing, noticed Pocahontas looking at him curiously. He'd forgotten she was there. She picked up the Indian's bow and canister and followed the two out of the clearing, muttering something to John in her strange, musical tongue.

He looked up, seeming shocked. " _Tom_?" he said. "No, of course not."

Pocahontas continued to consider Thomas silently. There was something he wasn't quite sure he liked in her dark gaze. But at least, thought Thomas, she no longer looked as if she were about to hit him.

As he helped carry the Indian, only stopping to sling that infernal musket over his shoulder and grunt occasionally under the Indian's weight, Thomas mulled over the absurdity of the situation he was in. He was, quite plainly, carrying a native to the camp, one who had just drawn a bow on the captain just twenty minutes before, and was accompanied by none other the captain himself and his Indian lover.

They would have made a strange—and highly troublesome—picture had anyone seen them, but John had been correct, as the sun had yet to rise by the time they reached the camp. Quietly yet quickly, they covered the campsite, aided by the covertness of the early hours of morning. Despite the slumber of the camp, Thomas's heart pounded. He could not help but jump at each rustle of the trees (fearing the sound to be a tent opening) and even his own footstep.

At last, the unusual procession arrived at Thomas's tent. They backed inside and, with considerable effort, heaved the Indian onto his meager cot. Rubbing his fatigued arms, Thomas stepped back and observed the scene: the Indian's eyes remained closed, and John's vest, tied around his wounded arm, was dark and wet with his blood. Under the oil-lit lamp of the tent, the native's face was clearer than Thomas had ever seen it. His traitorous gaze, unbidden, traced the man's sharp cheekbones, his brow, his jaw, his mouth.

"What am I to do when he wakes?" asked Thomas, depositing the gun in the corner of the tent. Pocahontas eyed the weapon with distaste.

"Considering the fall, he should be out for some time. The man is impressively concussed," said John, frowning contemplatively. "More pressing is that arm wound—we must stop that bleeding and properly bind the arm. I'll return in a moment with the medicines and poultice."

John left at once. With a start, Thomas realized that he was left alone with two natives. Granted, one was incapacitated and the other a woman he had no reason to fear, but he couldn't help his apprehensive gaze drifting to the bow in her arms. As if privy to his thoughts, Pocahontas snorted, tossed the weapon aside, and retrieved from a small pouch at her side a sort of herb. Then she crossed the tent and picked up a stone that Thomas often used for sharpening his knife.

Again she spoke in her foreign tongue. Her black eyes were questioning.

Thomas shrugged, glancing at the tent's entrance. "I don't know, I'm afraid," he said to her. "John should be back any minute now."

He attempted to make his voice soft and calm, the antithesis of what he felt at the moment, because he was brought up to never raise his voice at a lady (regardless of his present anxiety and the absurdity of the situation at hand), and he supposed the rule extended to lady natives as well.

Perhaps having heard the captain's name and interpreting Thomas's glance at the tent's entrance, Pocahontas shook her head and, gaze insisting, mimed crushing the herbs with the stone.

"Oh," said Thomas. "Of course, whatever will help. That is your—traditional—medicine, I suppose?"

Pocahontas did not answer (unlike Thomas, she had realized further communication was futile), and with a nod, began grinding the herbs to a paste. For the next few minutes, the pair sat in silence.

The silence, in Thomas's state, was maddening. Accompanying his fear of being discovered, guilt was beginning to settle low in his stomach, a terrible, uncomfortable weight. Never had he been so glad of his incompetence with a gun—and yet _glad_ was the wrong word, for nausea was rapidly overtaking him at the appalling realization that he had so nearly _killed_ a man, and without a second thought…

Thankfully, John arrived a minute later, and with him brought an armful of treatments.

"What is that?" he said at once to Pocahontas, who had removed the blood-soaked vest and was about to apply the herb paste to the Indian's wound. Thomas recoiled at the gaping, bloody hole exposed.

Her reply was indecipherable once again, and John shook his head, appearing annoyed. Only now did Thomas wonder at John's comprehension of her language, and her of his. But given the current state of events, it was not a particularly concerning discovery.

" _Not that_ ," said John firmly. "That won't do at all. _These_ are the medicines."

Pocahontas raised a brow but moved aside. John began to apply the poultice. Silence fell as he worked methodically.

When he finished, he bandaged the arm tightly with a clean white cloth. Blood stained it faintly pink.

"There, that will have stopped most of the bleeding," said John. "I had hoped he would have come to by now but...well, I suppose he should not be moved at the moment."

"How long must he stay here?" asked Thomas anxiously. He could see the grey walls of his tent turn faintly orange. The sun was beginning to rise.

"No longer than a day," said John. "Pocahontas will ensure he receives the rest of the treatment and that his bandages remain clean. Take your gun. Keep yourself outside, working. Once he comes to and realizes he's in our camp, he'll attempt to leave as soon as possible. Your tent is on the edge of the camp, and Ratcliffe remains ill. He'll surely be able to get away without discovery."

Pocahontas spoke with the tone of a question, and John turned sharply.

"Absolutely _not,_ " he said firmly. "I'll not have you found in an English camp."

John turned to Thomas and said, "We must go at once. The men will wake soon."

With that, he swept from the tent. After a parting look of concern over the unconscious native, Pocahontas followed.

Not wanting another unexpected surprise (and unwelcome discovery) from Lon and Percy, Thomas hastily gathered his weapon, compass, and shovel and left, but not without an anxious glance at the prone native. His bow and arrows lay in the tent's corner, and for a moment, Thomas considered taking them. But, he assured himself, a bow was no match against the men's guns in the case that the Indian was found, and no men would be found near the tents by the time he came to.

Thomas also could not, in good conscience, leave the man—Indian or not—unarmed in a stranger's camp. He acknowledged that he was protecting a strange native who had so nearly killed the captain, but the certainty with which John had saved that native's life left little doubt in Thomas's mind. And so, having no recourse but to adhere to John's myopic plan, Thomas left to dig.

In any rate, curled on Thomas's cot as he was, the Indian seemed quite defenseless.

* * *

As John had correctly stated, Ratcliffe remained ill, and so the day progressed very much like the one before. However, rather than leaving the camp to pursue John into the woods, Thomas stayed firmly put.

But his hands itched simply standing there, so Thomas began to dig while the men drank. This earned him some playful jeers, but they affected him little. He could not hear any of the men's voices but rather one constant refrain— _There's an Indian in my tent._

 _There's an Indian in my tent._

And so Thomas dug. He stopped only to gulp a cup of wine and exchange look with John, who had arrived at the campfire around noon and stayed for the remainder of the day. The captain, for all his assurances to Thomas, seemed nervous himself. His normally cheerful disposition was stifled, and he positioned himself beyond the far end of the campfire, so that anyone heading in the direction to Thomas's tent would have had to pass by him.

That assuaged Thomas's concerns temporarily, but he grew anxious again as evening fell, and then night. Finally, extricating himself from the growing pile of sloshed, lumbering arms, Thomas made his way back. John gave him a brief nod as he passed, which did little to curb his trepidation.

Thomas approached his tent. He soldiered his gun tightly to his body, took a breath, and swiftly pushed open the entrance.

His cot was empty. The bow and arrows were missing from the tent's corner. Thomas was not a murderer. The Indian lived.

The Indian lived—and now he knew exactly how to find his way back to the camp.

In their guilt, he and John had potentially invited a war upon their own men.

Thomas heard footsteps and whirled around, but the visitor was merely John. An unspoken terror seizing his speech, Thomas gaped at him wordlessly.

"Calm down, Thomas," said John. "I've received word from Pocahontas that her tribe has been aware of our general location for many weeks. They remain distant out of fear."

"But the wound?"

"Easily explained as an animal attack. The native hasn't told of our role in it, and his people are not so sophisticated as to recognize a gun wound."

Tension that had held Thomas a tightly coiled spring for hours left him at once. He wanted nothing but for the day to be swept behind him, and all of its memories with it.

Deflated, he sunk down onto his cot. It was cold and comfortless; it did not seem as if someone had just inhabited it.

"But he won't stay silent forever," continued John. "Pocahontas has arranged a meeting with him tomorrow. Let's hope that our sense of duty hasn't killed us all."


End file.
